VIDEO: Faye Webster Invitational Recap

ATL's alt-pop favorite brings an action-packed liveball tournament to our city

For the second year in a row, Faye Webster hosted the eponymous Faye Webster Invitational, offering participants the opportunity to show off their skills in a range of community-wide events spanning from chess and yo-yo to liveball. Founded in 2024, Webster held the event in Berkeley, California but shared with those in attendance that she had “selfishly wanted to bring it to Atlanta” this time around. I, Nancy, was one such participant of the liveball event alongside my now duos partner and good friend Myles. The result is the following behind-the-scenes mini-vlog. 

For the uninitiated, liveball is a tennis-based game played King of the Court style. High-energy and fast-paced, players move in a near consistent rotation in and out of the court as they make or miss shots fed by courtside referees to the challengers side.  

From 1-6pm, over 50+ players competed in a respective six baskets (meaning the actual basket from which the balls were pulled), each lasting 20 minutes and ranging in difficulty from Advanced, Intermediate and Beginner-Friendly drill brackets. Having no personal background in liveball (or tennis for that matter), I felt it was only appropriate I partake in the intermediate bracket so as to get a real taste of the sport. The name of the game is for incoming challengers to knock the “kings” of the court off the champ’s side. Once knocked, the challengers become the new champions and must race to the other side of the court within the 3 second count administered by the refs in order to make their responding shot. If missed on the first try on the challengers side, that duo is out. However, if it is missed on the second serve, only that player that missed the ball has to rotate out. Make sense? No? Good. Don’t even ask me about what the different colors for each ball mean. Alright, I’ll tell you. The orange is the final ball and it’s automatically match point. You make this, you won the basket. The pink ball is worth 3 points and there’s only one in the whole game. The rest are standard tennis balls. Easy enough. 

Ultimately, with El Tesoro catering, Turnstile’s Daniel Fang hanging out all day, and Faye Webster always 3 feet away, it was pretty hard to be too disappointed or focused on how you were actually playing and what your cumulative points even were. At least, if you’re me.